What does the end of Flash support mean for you?

So, I’ve been talking about this for the last year but wanted to write a quick post about what is basically going to be like the Y2K bug but with web sites if you’re not prepared.

Adobe Flash end of support on December 31, 2020

So what does that mean to you as the person in charge of your web site? Quite a bit if you are running flash on your web site.

Now it’s funny because back in the early 2000’s I was a great flash designer, I loved it, you could make great stuff. But that was 20 years ago. It’s not mobile friendly which is kind of a big deal because it’s 2020. Actually it was a big deal way before 2020 since we’ve had smart phones for a long time now.

I digress.

So if you have a Flash based web site it will no longer function at all. Not in Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox or any other browser.

Personally I find that “end of support” is putting it lightly. Thousands upon thousands of sites will just not load at all after this takes hold.

It’s easy to see if you will be affected by this. Right click in the middle of your web site. If you see the words “flash” then you are on a Flash web site that will no longer load January 1st.

The urgency, besides the web site going down and never coming back up, is that often times text content can be re-transcribed so that even tho the flash will not work, any important copy on the old web site can be utilized in a redesign.